Wednesday, November 2, 2011

Headlines - Wednesday November 2

"Some of my best friends are gay" Miss Virginia ("we called her Virgin for short, but not for long") Nikki Poteet went on a rip-snorting drunk over the weekend and profaned gays everywhere with the f-word, and of course now she is denying everything, and really said that some of her best friends are gay. Good luck getting your glamour-on now, sweetie. There isn't a hair-burner in your state that will do your roots, let alone match the drapes to the carpet. (Think Progress)

.... the teabaggers didn't mobilize -- or perhaps I should say weren't mobilized -- until after the inauguration of Barack Obama, even though most of the the things they complained about (deficit spending, the Wall Street bailout, the very existence of taxation or a social safety net) predated Obama's election. And they've never felt the level of disgruntlement with the sytem that Occupy does -- from the beginning they've found dozens of elected officials who suit them just fine, many of whom have actually been elected. You can't possibly say that about the Occupy protesters, whoknow they're well to the left of President Obama and the Democrats, even if the GOP is much further to the right.

The Occupy protesters are upset at a system that's failed them under both Republican and Democratic presidents. The tea party will utterly vanish the second its ideological soul mates seize control of what few parts of the government they don't control already, even if those soul mates don't enact a tea party agenda. (Did we hear a peep from any of these people when George W. Bush was running huge deficits or expanding government health care with the Medicare prescription drug plan?)

Occupy wants real change. The tea party wants a change in political control. That's it. End of story.

President Obama said he will make the final decision about whether his administration will approve TransCanada's Keystone XL oil pipeline, which would stretch from the Canadian border to the Gulf of Mexico. After White House press secretary Jay Carney said the State Department would make the decision, Obama insisted in an interview with a Nebraska TV station that the final word would be his.

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House representatives thought fit to claim their salary today by overwhelmingly passing a bill "reaffirming" that "In God We Trust" is still the official slogan of the United States, even though this has been the case every single day since 1956. Why bother with this routine bit of depraved political theater? Because according to the goober Republican who sponsored it, Rep. Randy Forbes, "Almost a year ago, the president in making a speech across the world said that our national motto was 'E pluribus unum.'" Which is not even in English! So screw Barack Obama if he can't remember what America's tagline is, Congress will pass an entire resolution to teach him a dumb lesson about it. But just as importantly, perhaps, it will also help remind citizens to file their numerous complaints about the country with God. READ MORE »

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"That's why our blacks are so much better than their blacks." MAnn Coulter

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Texas Governor Rick Perry had not been drinking in public or smoking marijuana in front of people or gobbling "back pills," according to the leader of the conservative group that hosted Perry's rambling, drunken speech over the weekend. "I can tell you unequivocally he wasn't drinking at the event and he hadn't been drinking prior to the event," Cornerstone Action director Kevin Smith told congressional trade magazine The Hill. "I was sitting with him … he was very articulate." Hundreds of thousands of people have watched Perry's intoxicated jabbering on YouTube, because it is funny to laugh at a stupid drunk. READ MORE »

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Marc Perkel:

Congress has only scheduled 109 work days for next year in a time where America is in a crisis.

We all know that they don't care what happens to America because all they care about is their petty partisan squabble. But by scheduling only 109 work days they are rubbing our noses in it.

I think that when they took an oath to the Constitution that they should at least be required to pretend they care. 109 days isn't even pretending. 109 days is just wrong.

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In another example of primitivism dressed up as law, a Sharia sentence was carried out in Saudi Arabia to cut off the head of a man accused of being a "sorcerer." Abdul Hamid Bin Hussain Bin Moustafa al-Fakki was executed in a car park Medina as citizens looked on to support punishment for immoral conduct.

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Bob Cesca:

I've been saying for years now that the Republicans are all about short-attention-span marketing. Simply put: bumper sticker sloganeering. And now, Republican pollster Ed Rodgers confirmed my theory:

Our team wants someone authentic, creative, fresh, bold and likeable. And we don't have much tolerance for too many facts or too much information. In politics, a bumper sticker always beats an essay. Cain's 9-9-9 is a bumper sticker; Romney's economic plan is an essay. Perry's rationale for giving the children of undocumented workers in-state college tuition rates is an essay. No hand-outs for illegal aliens is an effective bumper sticker.

Rodgers here verifies here that the Republicans don't care about the policy details of governing and, instead, rely upon whatever can be sold to simpletons who are prone to taking everything at face value. Wrestling is real. Reality shows reflect reality. A McRib sandwich is real pork. Just come up with the briefest slogan and you can sell anything to the rubes.

I appreciate any Republican who's honest about his party and ideology.

The next election is about the 9% popularity do-nothing Congress, and getting the message across that Republicans effectively control both houses is job one right now. I'm like Atrios and jobs on this topic, I realize, but that's because it's important.